Honey, I Killed The Kids
by Rayne Fenfire
Summary: Carol can't detach herself from everything anymore and suddenly needs to cope with the events that took place after her banishment from the Prison. To top it all off, the only person who gets it keeps running off into the wilderness. Until he doesn't. Carol's PoV. Contains spoilers for the S5 finale.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of the sweethearts used in the following piece of fiction. No profit has been, is or will be made with it.

**Dedication: **This one's for my cute, lil' **_Murasakiiro no sakura_** who tried to convince me to write some more Caryl fluff and easily succeeded in that.

**xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox**

* * *

One week has passed since the night Pete stole Michonne's sword and murdered Reg, since Rick killed Pete, since Daryl and Aaron brought Morgan to Alexandria - since they have started to change this place. For the better or for the worse that remains to be seen.

After the funerals, Rick and Deanna have come to several agreements concerning the restructuring of the Safe Zone. The first step was to establish proper weapon training and organize a capable team to do the supply runs. They put Glenn in charge of that. The second step is still in progress and consists of developing some sort of detention center, just in case any other Alexandrian citizen displayed problematic behavior. The idea is to keep people like Pete under control and yet preserve them as valuable participants to the community. Carol doubts that's going to work.

There is no way to control men like Pete. Wife beaters, _child_ beaters, they were the ones in charge. They don't just give that up, because they know people are depending on them, because they _made_ those people dependant on them. They are the doctors and attorneys, the hard-working fathers who provide for you, and so you owe them. You owe them everything, from your body to your soul and-…

She slams the casserole on the kitchen counter and almost breaks the dish.

_Carol, stop!_

She leans over it, supporting herself on her elbows as she covers her eyes with one hand and tries to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Deeply, slowly. Simple as that.

She sighs as she looks up again, staring at the several cupboards of her luxury, white kitchen and fights the urge to set it on fire. This isn't her. And after all that happened with Rick she's not so sure anymore that the people of Alexandria can still believe it is. She does know, though, that they want to. They want to see that Rick is the exception, that the rest of them aren't as damaged by the outside world and that they all have their shit together. So she keeps up with the fairytale, dresses in floral blouses, bakes some cookies to shut Sam up and staples the corners of her mouth behind her earlobes every morning.

And she begins to wonder for how long she has to do this.

She wants this to work for them, for the family, but she doesn't know if she can be part of it anymore.

It got harder to suppress them. The memories of Ed, Sophia, Daryl, Mika and Lizzie… Everything in this damn town is bringing them up in one way or another, reminding her of why she can't allow herself to get attached. She can't watch any more people dying – or slipping away.

She turns her head to look outside the window, half expecting Sam to press his nose against the glass and gasp for some cookies, and she's a lot more relieved than comfortable to admit that she can't see anyone standing out there. It's dark already. And she hasn't heard from Daryl in two days. Which isn't helping her to stay inside the walls of Alexandria at all. She misses him. She misses the talks and the gentle silence, the teasing and even the fighting and above all that inexplicable comfort she experiences in his mere presence.

Of course, she's happy for him. She's happy that he found his purpose in this community and still gets to be outside. And she envies him. She envies Aaron, who gets to be outside with him while she's stuck in a goddamn kitchen with an entire town of whiny children waiting for her to share her _oh so_ profound housing experiences. She has thought this was the kind of peace she wanted, needed – but with every passing day she realizes it's not and she feels the old urge to run away creeping into her mind.

She shakes her head. Enough of the dark thoughts for this evening.

She reaches out for a small notepad and leaves a brief message for Daryl on it: _Made of love and squirrels, just how you like it. – Carol_

She is _very_ well aware of how much he hates it when she keeps the _Stepford Wife_ charade up around him but it's too much fun to spread all these small notes around the house and think of his cynical snort when he reads them. It's a short lifeline of levity, but it's all she's got for now. She trusts him, him and his abilities. He's a survivor, always has been, but that doesn't mean things couldn't go wrong. She can never know for certain when or _if_ he'd home again and after the first three nights of him not returning at all, she gave up on staying awake and hoping. It would only consume her farther. (No matter how often Eric, unsolicited, assured her that the recruiting runs could empirically last a few days and that there's usually no need to worry.)

However, she is rather certain that Daryl knows something's up.

She walks upstairs and changes into a pair of long, black pajama pants and a white silk top and as she sits down on the left side of the full-size bed, cross-legged, she catches herself absentmindedly stroking over the empty half of it. Daryl has his own bedroom in this house but sometime late at the night of Pete's execution, he came over to check on her. She has been pathetically crying herself to sleep, even though she knew that man's death had been a necessity (She has _urged_ Rick to do it, for crying out loud!), and even though she's been extraordinarily quiet, he must have noticed something. She was about to doze off as she suddenly felt the mattress bending under his weight. It woke her up and she quickly wiped over her face and turned around to see him freeze in the middle of kicking his shoes off.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake ya" he muttered.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Mh, you didn't. What's up?"

"That's what I came to ask ya." He finished the movement and laid down next to her, crossing his arms behind the pillow and bending his legs. He didn't bother to take anything else off.

"Come again?"

"You a'right?" He shifted his head to look up at her face with gentle concern.

For the first time in days she could feel a genuine smile moving her features and she almost burst out in tears again because she didn't know what to tell him, except for: "Gotta be."

Daryl kept looking at her, while she laid down on her back with that tiny smile of hers, because even though she couldn't talk about it yet, it meant so much more than he could possibly know, that he was there right when he was. After a few moments of blissful silence she turned her head to look at him and scooted closer to embed her head on his shoulder, laying an arm around him. He let her and she inhaled his scent and smiled at that hint of vanilla hand soap lingering underneath the familiar motorcycle musk as she slowly fell asleep to the sound of his breaths and the sensation of his fingers diving into her grey, slightly curling hair.

So yeah, Daryl definitely knows that something's up with her. But he isn't here and so Carol lays down to sleep and fights her demons off alone.

* * *

The world looks a lot brighter in the morning.

Carol gets out of bed rather early and brews herself a mug of tea in the kitchen. The casserole's still there and perfectly untouched, just like the note she has left next to it. She feels a sting in her chest, bites her lower lip, then slips into a black woolen cardigan and steps out on the porch with her hands wrapped around the steaming mug.

She hears the engine before she sees it and she sighs into her mug with relief as her heart takes an almost painful, happy leap. She raises her gaze and watches Daryl driving down the quaint lane until he comes to a halt right in front of their house and turns off the engine. He looks good with sun bans, but he always turns her compliments down, so she leaves it at a light-hearted "Good morning."

He gets off his bike, shoulders his crossbow. She screws up one eye against the still low-standing sun while he walks up the porch. Dried blood was sticking to the sleeves of his leather jacket and covering his shoes. "Mornin'." His voice sounds rawer than usual, somewhat tired. He takes off his sunglasses and just looks at her for a while.

Her smile fades over to a slight frown. "Any signs of those _Wolves_?"

"Nah. Nothin'. Just walkers." This obviously bothers him. So much that even his hair's twitching. _Wait, what?_

Carol takes another sip of her tea, then cocks her head to the side to see what's up with that.

"Somethin' wrong?" he asks her, slightly confused and in response she draws an invisible circle in the air.

"Turn around, I think, you've got something in your hair." He does slightly turn, frowning, reaching up for whatever got tangled in his dark bangs, but Carol's quicker. Their hands touch for a second before Daryl's jerks back again. "Careful!" she chuckles as she gently curves her fingers around the butterfly that desperately flutters in his neck. "Looks like you've brought a new friend in" she informs him and has him turn around once more to take a look at the caged insect.

"How the hell…?"

She opens her fingers and the insect flies off, they both follow its zig-zagged route for a while. After another sip of tea, Carol's eyes dart back to Daryl's face. "Maybe it's time for a haircut" she suggests, reaching out for his face to stroke the bangs out of his eyes. He just snorts at that. And earns her mocking den-mother frown for it. "I'm serious. Can you even see anything from behind those?"

"I'd cut 'em myself, if I needed to", he defends himself half-heartedly.

"You got your flaws, Daryl, but vanity isn't one of them. Now, you caught a butterfly with your hair. It's getting ridiculous." Her mug-free hand grabs his crossbow-free one. She intertwines their fingers and squeezes his a little too much. Of course, he notices. He frowns at their hands, but he doesn't pull back, nor does he say anything about it. "Come inside. I'll cut them for you", she sing-songs, sipping on her tea as she drags him into the house.

"Yeah, a'right…" he snorts behind her.

* * *

Daryl took a shower first and changed into a black t-shirt and a pair of grey sweatpants, while Carol brought a chair into the bathroom, placed it in front of the sink and searched for some suitable scissors and a comb.

His hair's still dripping wet as he sits down on the chair the wrong way around, crossing his arms over the backrest. Carol throws a small towel over his head and vigorously rubs his hair dry.

"God damn it, woman!" he complains, but she can literally hear his smirk, and thus she playfully keeps ruffling his hair until she finally places the towel over his shoulders. She can't suppress a chuckle as her masterpiece unfolds itself in front of her; Daryl's head's a wonderful mess, with a few streaks randomly protruding into several directions. He runs a hand through it, gluing most of it to the top of his head as he turns around to glare at her. It would have been more threatening (if at all), when the first streaks weren't falling back into his eyes already.

"Oh my…" she chuckles, kind of helplessly standing there with the scissors in one, the comb in the other hand and absolutely no clue where to even begin.

"'Twas your idea" he reminds her. "Now, let's get it over with, 'fore I fall off this chair…" there is no hint of annoyance around him, just plain exhaustion.

She starts combing his hair and the prongs glide a lot more smoothly through it than she has expected. "Rough night at work?" she tries to joke but truth be told she dreads the details.

"Had worse", he replies with a shrug as she combs out his bangs over his eyes. A brief glimpse into the mirror reveals that he's observing her through it and she pauses to flash a tiny, knowing smile at him. She redirects her focus on the back of his head and snaps the scissors a few times, while playing with his hair-ends, trying to decide how much she'd cut off. She thinks of the Prison. The nice bits. The night on the bus. The day he found her. The morning he came back. Back then his hair had been long enough to hold onto (not that she'd ever needed to) and yet short enough to enjoy the view of his face. That'd be perfect. "How 'bout you?"

She cuts the first few inches off. "Nothing fancy. Deanna wants Maggie and me to organize another dinner party. Bringing us all back together after all that happened with Pete, welcoming Morgan." She thinks of Hershel and spaghetti Tuesdays on every Wednesday. Good Lord, her mind really is stuck in the past, lately.

"I wished you'd stop doin' this already", he grumbles, slightly turning his head and thereby nearly getting his ear cut.

She pulls back just in time, pulls a face, then gently turns his head to face the mirror again. "Stop doing what?"

"Pretendin'? Kissin' everyone's ass, that ain't you" he points out, turning his upper body to look up at her, while she jerks back, sighing with annoyance for she almost gouged his eye out.

"Hold still, will you?" She lays her hands on his temples and turns him back once more, a lot less gentle this time. "I'm not kissing anyone's ass; I'm… playing my part to make this work for us."

"I know. Just doesn't look like that's workin' for _you_", he mutters, still watching her through the mirror.

"And how would you know?" she asks, almost forcing herself to keep her voice calm and her focus on the back of his head. "It's not like you've been around to see how anything works in here." Great. Now she's really being all petulant about it. She bites her lower lip and keeps cutting, taking a few deep breaths.

"Didn't need to. But am now. I'm right here. An' I'm with ya" he emphasizes, causing her to frown and quickly wipe her right palm over her eye, before she walks around him.

"Just hold still." She cuts his bangs, trying to avoid eye contact by focusing on his hair only and about a quarter-hour later she's done with him, sweeping the clipped hair off his shoulders and his back. "There you go!" She strokes through his hair a few more times, then gives it a terminatory ruffle. And that's when Daryl reaches back and mindfully wraps his strong fingers around her skinny wrist. Carol raises her eyebrows with mild confusion as she watches him getting up and turning around. The incident light of the morning sun hits his face and brings out the green of his eyes. It would make a nice view if only the veil of tears wasn't blurring her vision and she blinks it away with surprise, feeling the first thick ones dripping off her cheeks. Oh dear, for how long has she been crying already? She hasn't even noticed her eyes watering up and nothing!

Daryl closes the distance between them, never letting go of her wrist, and softly presses his lips against her forehead. "'s okay. I ain't gonna let ya shut down. You can let yaself feel it. You gotta" he speaks against her skin and after a few more seconds of trembling and breath catching – she breaks. The guilt and regret, the grief and the pain, she buckles underneath it all and falls into him, dropping the scissors with a clank. And he catches her. She claws onto his shirt, face buried at the crook of his neck and he wraps his arms around her, holding her up, supporting her in whatever way she needed.

"I tried, Daryl. I tried and I kept _trying_, but it just doesn't matter", she rambles between sobs. "I tried at the prison. I tried to make up for failing to save Sophia. I tried to teach those children how to protect themselves. And then the girls… I told them I wasn't their mother and I tried not to feel like I was, but I couldn't help it. It just happened and I was responsible for them and I failed. Again."

"That ain't for nothin', y'know." He has lowered his head as if to make sure that his words would actually reach her, but they brush past her ear along with his breath and comfort. He's holding her in that sort of embrace that miraculously kept all the evil in the world at a reverent distance but what good is that, when the evil has already crept inside? When all she does is standing there, absorbing his warmth like a goddamn parasite. She doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve him.

Carol moves back, abruptly, almost violently, and nearly headbutts Daryl in the process, all just in order to look him straight up in the face. Hers is glistening with smeared tears but the expression in her big, blue eyes is a blood-freezing mixture of challenges, pleas and forced emptiness where the pain is still gleaming through. "I killed them." Her voice wavers but she maintains eye contact, bracing herself to see disgust, condemnation, censure. "I had to" she begins to justify herself even though, or perhaps because Daryl isn't showing any signs of that feared judgement. Instead he just radiates that certain openness that would allow her to barf her sorrows in their entirety all over him without ever interrupting her.

"I thought I could make Lizzie understand. I wanted for them to have a chance in this world, I wanted for them to make it. So badly that I didn't see it." Her whole body's shaking and Daryl's hands are probably the only thing keeping her together right now. She hides half of her face in her hands, closes her eyes, tries to recollect her breath, then slowly shakes her head once. "Lizzie wasn't right. She was convinced the walkers were still people; she fed them, _played _with them and I still didn't see it. Didn't want to. And Mika paid for it." She gasps for air as the memory mercilessly cuts her heart open once more. Her gaze helplessly returns to Daryl's face. "She killed her. She wanted us to watch her turn, so we'd see. She wanted Judith to turn next. I should've seen it coming." Their eyes met and she spotted unshed tears shimmering in his, mirroring her pain. "It had to be me. I shot her."

He pulls her to him again and her hands that have been shiftlessly hanging onto his shirt find a new hold on his back. "She couldn't be around people." Her whine is muffled by his shirt as she hides her face at his shoulder.

"And I don't know if I can be either." Her fingers claw into his back but he doesn't even flinch. "Karen, David, Lizzie, Mika and even Pete, that's on me too. I've got so much blood on my hands, Daryl. It's all I see, whenever I close my eyes it all turns red, it's everywhere and it's eating me alive! I don't even know if there's anything left of me, who I am, it's-…" It all breaks down to lost, desperate, tearful rambling only intermitted by occasional choking and sobbing.

"Okay, ya stop that right there." Daryl leans back, just enough to cup her face with his both hands and bring their foreheads together. She feels his thumbs stroking the tears off her cheeks, which is a pointless but very sweet gesture for she just couldn't stop crying. "I know you." Trying to control her breath she opens her eyes and finds herself overwhelmed not only by their closeness but their affinity. "You ain't no murderer. And you damn sure ain't no den-mother either. You're a survivor. An' ya do what ya gotta to protect the only thing you got left. This is our family, Carol. Keepin' those ass-kickers safe, that's what we do. Ain't no wrong in that."

A very gross sound, stuck somewhere between a chuckle and a snivel, fights its way out of her burning throat and she loosens her grip on his back to cover his hands with hers in order to keep them right where they are. A tiny, crooked smile lingers on her features, born of a relief that words cannot describe. Carol hasn't even felt that light after they had secured the Prison. She got the poison out of her system and Daryl's unconditional acceptance is cleansing the wound, patching her up until it feels no longer fresh and hot. The healing can finally begin. Soon it would just be another gruesome scar on her soul, an ugly thing, but nothing that could burn her away anymore.

"We're all covered in blood. We've all got our burdens to carry but ya can't carry 'em alone. And you don't have to, ya hear me?" His voice his barely above a raucous whisper as he searches her gaze, while she is still too busy sniveling to bring off anything beyond a few small nods.

He pulls her into yet another embrace, one arm wrapped around her small back, the other diving into her hair, while she gets a hold on his shoulders, letting the last waves of emotional torment seep out of her.

She has no idea how long they've been standing like this until the emotional torment has ebbed away far enough for her to raise her head and dry her face with the sleeves of her cardigan. "You okay?" Again, she can't help but smile at his question.

"Yah." She lets her hands stroke over his shoulders and down his arms, gently pushing them off her, so that she can link their fingers. "It's just… I swear to God, Daryl Dixon, if _you_ ever dare to die on me…" she tries to laugh that haunting thought off again with sad self-mockery.

"I won't. Somethin' 'bout nine lives, remember?"

"Pft. I can't believe you just said that." They both chuckle light-heartedly, still standing in the scattered pool of his clipped hair and bathing in the warming sunlight of the growing day. It's beautiful. Stained and imperfect, but so are they and as long as they still have each other it'd always be okay. She'd always be okay.

/END

* * *

**xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox**

_author's note:_

This got a little deeper than I thought it would.  
And yes, nevertheless, the title's totally a nudge towards the sci-fi comedy _Honey, I Shrunk The Kids_, because my sense of humor is twisted like that. Deal with it. xP


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